PORT CLINTON – Last winter, operators of the Toledo and Ottawa County water plants said if toxic algae continued to plague Lake Erie at high levels, they couldn't guarantee they would be able to provide safe drinking water.

Over the weekend, their fears were realized in Toledo.

Toxin levels were so high at the Toledo water plant that it was not able to provide drinking water to its more than 400,000 customers in Northwest Ohio and southeast Michigan.

The city told residents not to drink the water because it contained microcystin, a nerve toxin that can cause liver problems and gastrointestinal illness and is produced by harmful blue-green algae. Boiling the water does not remove the toxin, so residents across Northwest Ohio were scrambling for bottled water at local stores on Saturday.

Ottawa County's drinking water is safe for now, but Ottawa County Sanitary Engineer Kelly Frey is concerned the county plant could face the same problem as Toledo in the coming weeks if the harmful algal blooms move east. Ottawa County does have a plan to get drinking water to residents in a similar situation.

"This is a crisis," Frey said Saturday of Toledo's situation. " I've been talking about this for months. I could see it coming.

"It's very frustrating for me."

In December, Frey joined Toledo's department of environment commissioner, Tim Murphy, in expressing concerns about the issue at the Lake Erie Improvement Association's conference at the Catawba Island Club. They referenced the Carroll Township water plant shutting down for a few days in September because the levels of microcystin were too high for drinking water.

Frey has been asking the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency and legislators to fund research into the problem algae poses for water plants and come up with a solution.

There are no state or federal regulations for testing for microcystin or for removing it from drinking water. Normal water treatment processes don't remove the toxin, so plants have spent the past few years trying to determine what works best to get rid of it, Frey said.

"Unfortunately, the focus has been on how do you clean the lake," Frey said. "This is more than just a lake issue. The lake is a long-term solution.

"The short-term problem is the water plants. Unfortunately, it's come to a crisis situation."

Ottawa County started planning recently for such a situation and already had scheduled a meeting for Tuesday with the county's largest water users, local hospitals, county officials and the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency. The meeting is the first of its kind in Ohio, Frey said.

"EPA has been responsive, but they're still watching," Frey said. "They're not proactive. Everything EPA and the city of Toledo are doing today is reactive."

If Ottawa County should have to shut down its drinking water, officials plan to shut off the county's three water towers to keep the toxin from getting into that water supply. Locals could then go to stations the county sets up and fill jugs with water from the towers, Frey said.

"We'll have several spigots set up," he said.

The county would work with Port Clinton and Oak Harbor to shut off their towers and provide the same service to their customers, Frey said. Ottawa County is in a better position than Toledo because Toledo does not have water towers, Frey said.

He also recommends locals keep at least three days' worth of water on hand at home.

"I feel we're going to be OK," Frey said. "The problem that we're having, though is, how long is this going to last?"

The algae, which is actually a bacteria called microcystis, usually shows up in August and September. A bloom began in the Toledo area in late July, and the Sandusky Bay traditionally has an early summer bloom that is a different type of harmful algae.

Phosphorous from fertilizer runoff and sewer plants mainly fuel the blooms. Various universities and groups are studying the blooms in an effort to stop them, and in recent years, Ohio started a voluntary program for farmers to reduce how much fertilizer they use.

Last month, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration gave its annual forecast for how bad the harmful algae in Lake Erie's Western Basin would be this year. On a scale of one to 10 with 10 being the worst, scientists said the bloom would be a five or six.

They said the bloom would not be as bad as last year or the 2011 bloom, which was the worst on record.

Meanwhile, Frey and other water plant operators on Lake Erie's Western Basin continue to experiment with what works best to remove the toxin. Ottawa County uses activated powder carbon.

"There are dozens of activated powder carbons," he said. "Which is the best one for treating microcystin? Nobody knows.

"It's all just by trial and error."

Two water plants on the Western Basin, Toledo and Oregon, test water for microcystin. Ottawa County sends its samples to Oregon for testing.

OEPA also works with plant operators on Lake Erie and at inland lakes to voluntarily test and monitor for the toxin, agency spokeswoman Dina Pierce said in June.

From testing to treatment, the process is expensive, Frey said. That's one of the reasons Ottawa County increased water rates 4.5 percent this year, he said.